Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Alternate 100"

The list that follows is Jonathan Rosenbaum’s “Alternate 100”: a list the critic offered in 1998 as an alternative to the “100 Greatest American Movies” list published by the American Film Institute. Rosenbaum writes:

“if I were drawing up my own list of the 100 greatest American movies, roughly a quarter of the AFI's list would be on it. But it seems more useful to offer an alternative list of 100 features rather than an unwieldy composite of the 25 or so AFI titles I can live with and 75 others . . . . Above all, my impulse is to defend the breadth, richness, and intelligence of the American cinema against its self-appointed custodians, who seem to want to lock us into an eternity of Oscar nights. And the most salient fact about my list is that it's far from exhaustive”

(note: Rosenbaum’s original list appeared with the titles in alphabetical order; here I have taken the liberty of rearranging the list into chronological order with the notion that one might approach this list as a sort of viewer’s guide to an alternate history of American cinema.)

Intolerance (1916)
Broken Blossom (1919)
Foolish Wives (1922)
Nanook of the North (1922)
Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Greed (1925)
The General (1927)
Sunrise (1927)
The Crowd (1928)
The Docks of New York (1928)
Lonesome (1929)
Thunderbolt (1929)
Laughter (1930)
Freaks (1932)
Love Me Tonight (1932)
Scarface (1932)
Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (1933)
Man's Castle (1933)
The Black Cat(1934)
Judge Priest (1934)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
The Great Garrick (1937)
Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
Christmas in July (1940)
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
The Strawberry Blonde (1941)
Cat People (1942)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
The Palm Beach Story (1942)
This Land is Mine (1943)
The Seventh Victim (1943)
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Scarlett Street (1945)
Gilda (1946)
Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Force of Evil (1948)
The Lady from Shanghai (1948)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)
The Sound of Fury/Try and Get Me! (1950)
Stars in My Crown (1950)
Panic in the Streets (1950)
Hole/The Big Carnival (1951)
The Steel Helmet (1951)
The Big Sky (1952)
My Son John (1952)
Park Row (1952)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
The Naked Spur (1953)
The Barefoot Contessa (1954)
Johnny Guitar (1954)
Track of the Cat (1954)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
The Phenix Story (1955)
Bigger Than Life (1956)
The Killing (1956)
While the City Sleeps (1956)
An Affair to Remember (1957)
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)
The Wrong Man (1957)
The Tarnished Angels (1958)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Rio Bravo (1959)
Shadows (1960)
The Hustler (1961)
The Ladies' Man (1961)
Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
The Nutty Professor (1963)
Vinyl (1965)
Point Blank (1967)
The Shooting (1967)
Tom, Tom , the Piper's Son (1969)
Scenes from Under Childhood (1970)
Woodstock (1970)
Zabriskie Point (1970)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Wanda (1971)
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971)
Avanti! (1972)
The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
Eaweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1974)
11 x 14 (1976)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)
Mikey & Nicky (1976)
Last Chants of a Slow Dance (1977)
Eraserhead (1978)
Killer of Sheep (1978)
The Scenic Route (1978)
Real Life (1979)
Love Streams (1984)
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Housekeeping (1987)
Do the Right Thing (1989)
To Sleep With Anger (1990)
That's Entertainment! III(1994)
Dead Man (1995)